This move is not exactly a surprise, but you have to wonder if Emile Haddad is starting to hone in on Don Bren’s customers. Broadcom, the giant semi-conductor provider that makes chips found in a number of personal electronic devices to high end enterprise computing networks last week announced a deal to locate their Irvine headquarters in new campus styled buildings to be constructed in land at the Orange County Great Park.
The Broadcom move capped a three year search for new space and frees them from what’s estimated as a $2 million a month rent check to the Irvine Company.
From the Register’s story:
Irvine-based tech giant Broadcom will move to Great Park Neighborhoods after agreeing to buy land for a new 1.1 million-square-foot corporate headquarters, the company announced Thursday. It has the option to expand to up to 2 million square feet. The campus will be designed by M. Arthur Gensler Jr. & Associates, Inc. and built by DPR Construction. It will include development labs and open-office work spaces.
One of the company’s subsidiaries entered into a land-purchase agreement with Heritage Fields El Toro LLC, a partnership made up of Lennar Homes and its investors. Once the new headquarters is built, it will be the first commercial development at Great Park Neighborhoods.
A statement released by the company didn’t mention a price.
“We are thrilled to move forward with Broadcom’s new corporate campus in the city of Irvine. Owning land and building a campus provides Broadcom with favorable economics and flexibility for the long-term,” said Scott McGregor, Broadcom’s president and chief executive officer, in a statement.
Keeping Broadcom in OC is important to the area’s huge technology economy. There are a number of significant semi-conductor companies based in Irvine and Newport Beach. And there are big software shops, gaming companies, PC vendors, data security firms and companies like Vizio, Mitsubishi and Ollo Technologies focused more on consumer electronics.
What’s important to note is the technology economy is Orange County has very little to do with political policy and everything to do with access to technology talent at UC-Irvine, proximity to transportation hubs, and a well-educated workforce. Without Broadcom’s well-documented success, company co-founder Henry Samueli might never have purchased the NHL’s Anaheim franchise from Disney.
The construction of the new campus is expected to create hundreds of good paying jobs in Irvine. Construction begins next years and will be completed by 2017.
Glad to see Broadcom take full ownership and control of property and project so they can work with Gensler to come up with something that isn’t so ordinary like original plans. Being Gensler has done so many other cutting edge designs for other companies in the hi tech industry. Broadcom deserves more than ordinary and Platinum LEED was be great achievement for project also.